Cottage pie

Dating. It’s a minefield. What is it that makes us turn into indecisive squibbling wrecks when the mere thought of a date occurs? Picture the scene, you’ve known a guy for a few months, get on great, have a pretty simialr sense of humour, like the same music, know the same people and realise ‘hang on!, maybe this could be the ‘One’. The fact that you’ve known them and spent every saturday afternoon down the local with them goes out of the window, suddenly they are a whole new person.

A light shines down and warns you that everything must be done correctly or else, you may miss the chance of a lifetime. So along you trot for your first date, possibly the first time said man has ever seen you in a skirt and you scare the life out of him. He is no longer friendly frankie from down the boozer, he’s a Possible Mate. Conversation goes out of the window and you both stare at the menu like it’s written in Japanese, backwards, and in invisible ink. Nervousness gets the better of you and before the main course you’re both sloshed, which is ok, you’ve been drunk together lots of times, you feel on safe ground, but the next morning you realise the last thing you remember was flicking pasta at the man obviously wearing a syrup across the room and picking asparagus out of your teeth with a breadstick, or at least, trying to.

If you’re lucky you get over the embarrassing incident and go on a few more dates, even start ’seeing each other’ as casual relationships are so politely put. Not that you have your eyes closed when not seeing each other, but it’s the perfect phrase for ‘I’m shagging so-and-so so everyone else can keep their hands off him/her BUT we aren’t actually boyfriend and girlfriend so I still have my options open.’ Plus once you get past primary school age it’s not quite as easy to pass love notes under the table with tickboxes asking if the potential mate will be yours, so actually broaching the question means possible rejection TO YOUR FACE, which will never do.

Around about now you hear it. Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock. Nope, not your biological clock, or your fake omega watch, it’s the 3 month countdown. Every relationship has to pass three months before it can be classed as Serious (boyfriend/girlfriend territory). The first few weeks, great. Then you start to notice the odd habits, like painting their toe nails or collecting ring pulls. But that’s fine, they are easy enough to cope with, at first. When you’re stumbling around for a glass of water in the middle of the night and step on said ring pulls you’ve found it……………………..

…………..Point 1 as to ‘Why It Didn’t Work’. More of these Points come up weekly, daily if you’re really unlucky and by the time you get to about ten it’s time to start thinking about pastures new. But how to end it? How do you really end something that no-one is willing to acknowledge has even started? You can’t dump someone you’re just seeing, can you? If there is no real relationship, there are no real arguments so it can’t be a wonderfully tempestuous row as you storm out of the door into the rain never to be seen again, oh no, it has to be much more subtle than that.

Step 1. Cancel all arrangements, all of a sudden your best friend/sister/neighbours cousins dog needs you so you won’t be able to go out this weekend. Also the person that needs you, needs you at their home so you won’t be in. Phone will be unanswered most times because either A)Left in your car or B)Battery has died and you forgot to take your charger, texts will be answered, but short and sweet and at least two hours after they have first been read. This way there are no nasty avoidance issues you’re just drifting apart.

Step 2. When home, block them on MSN/AIM/Yahoo only to unblock the temporarily for about an hour a day, but don’t message them first, wait til they message you, then be ‘just off out’ after ten minutes of conversation, and re-block them. Still drifting apart.

Step 3. After about three/four weeks of not actually seeing them anywhere go where you know you will see them and act as platonic as possible, plus flirt with the barman. This shows everyone you are on the market again without showing up the guy you would’ve dumped if it had gone past three months.

If you’ve done it well you’ll still be friends with said bloke and he will probably not think anything of it, because in his mind it was just something casual that ran it’s course. Unless he is a drip. This is slightly harder, because he will constantly phone you, text you, message you, turn up at your door and bombard you with crappy teddys and helium balloons shaped like love hearts. If this occurs you’ll have to have ‘The Talk’. This is where you explain that although he is a really nice guy you just don’t have time for a relationship right now, and then snog his friend. Harsh but straight to the point.

So how do you know if the three month timer is going to go off?

Simple, it’s like Cottage pie. You never really desperately want it like a curry or a pizza, but at the time, it’s all that is there. So you eat it, and actually quite enjoy it, but after an hour or so you need something tastier, some chocolate or a glass of wine because Cottage Pie is great to fill an empty stomach/time but once you’ve eaten it a few times you realise it just isn’t satisfying and go on the look out for a Big Mac.

Offended by proxy - Can we not say anything without being told off?

Jumped up snobs with nothing better to complain about. That is the kind of person I refer to with this blog. We have all met one, be it in real life or reading a newspaper, hearing a politician or being told just why we cannot speak those terribly offensive remarks.

If I offend someone with my views, I apologise, but they are my views, they are the way I think and feel and are as much a part of me as my breath. If I offend someone wand they wish to explain to me why and try to educate me then I will listen and I try to understand their point of view. But if that person has no opinion or argument against my thoughts themselves except that I 'might' offend someone with my views then I'd prefer it if they kept them to themselves.

One of the arguments of 'can't say that you'll offend someone' that has really got my goat lately is how apparently making factual statements about formula milk for babies is making people that used this method of feeding feel guilty. Hmmm. Not once have I said 'Oh, you bad bad person, feeding your baby formula milk is tantamount to poisoning them with arsenic biscuits a la Flowers in the Attic'. No. My view on formula milk is that is an adequate and sometimes necessary alternative to breastmilk, breastmilk being the best possible source of nutrition and formula following in second place. The reason I feel this way? SCIENCE HAS PROVED IT.

What I do feel however is that it is despicable the way it is a product made by profit making companies at the expense of our babies, and that every time anyone makes a reasonable query about what it contains or how it is made or how it will affect our children in comparison to breastmilk the manufacturers spout the 'can't say that, making formula feeders feel bad' rubbish. It's not as if the people saying it are even trying to protect someone else's feelings. They are trying to protect their profits. Then of course we have the mothers who didn't breastfeed because they didn't want to saying that they are feeling guilty for not feeding because they have suddenly become aware of the facts. Whose fault is that? Really? The peopel that are campaigning to get the truth out there? Or the people that withheld the information in the first place?

Then of course we get the accusation of being 'militant breastfeeders'. Well, yes I breastfed my son, but I'm certainly not militant in any way shape or form and as I breastfed how on earth does it make any difference to me whatsoever as to what happens with formula milk? It affects me in what way exactly? It's obviously in the best interests of all mothers and babies to have more information about formula milk so they can make fact-based unbiased decisions. e about it rather than people with something to gain from the sale of formula complaining about the lack of advertising allowed in this area by acting offended 'by proxy'.
Hmm.

I've fallen in love.....with myself - A sign of thinking too much.

Today is the dawn of a brand new day, well, actually it's a rather piss poor January morning and I don't have much to do, but just lately have noticed I've been talking to myself slightly too much.

Which makes me wonder, how much talking to yourself is too much? a little? a lot? when you start replying? arguing? or falling love with yourself? I'm inclined to believe that when you're still laying awake at stupid o'clock in the morning having discussions with yourself instead of sleeping then maybe, just maybe you're borderline.

Of course it could be that what you have to say is incredibly important and totally worthwhile but that as it is four o'clock in the morning there is no-one around to listen to you, and what if someone was,but didn't agree? Would that make it worse or better?

It's these type of thoughts that worry me about starting this blog. Yes, you read right, I'm worried about starting to write a blog. I have only written a couple before on myspace that were pretty paltry to be fair but on there I felt I should write things that someone would actually want to read, now, I'm falling into a trap of just wanting to write what I think and not caring about anyone else's opinions or if anyone reads it, which could mean I become addicted.

I should request now that no commenter ever disagree with me, it could be, and most likely will be very detrimental to my health.

I think I've come to the point where I decide what I am going to write about now, this is where any readers I have so far decide to disappear never to read again. Subjects I feel strongly about will obviously be top of the list, but those subjects change on a daily basis, though I suspect a large part of it is going to be centred around my Britishness, something I have only recently noticed. How on earth it slipped by me all these years I will never understand, but I am British and conform terribly to the stereotypes.

I love to queue, and at the same time tut and pull faces and close ranks if it seems anyone might dare break the unwritten rule of queue-jumping, which of course, unless you're a gobshite from the Chatsworth Estate must never be confronted ever. Hence the tutting and maximum distance of around 2 feet between each queuer, which miraculously becomes about 4 inches when the queue gets threatened by someone hoping to squeeze in and not willing to wait their turn.

I also adhere to the rule that we do not talk to people we don't know, except to pass judgement on the weather or the failure of the local sports team. Imagine my horror when the woman next to me at the bus stop (in the queue) decides to start talking to me, about personal things! The total ignorance she displayed towards the Rules of Britishness was bad enough, but to think someone you have never spoken to before wants to discuss their medical history with you begs the question "Do you have no manners?" Again, thought only in head but portrayed as a wry smile so as not to be rude.

What else makes us Brits so noticeable to one of our kind? Maybe it's the solitary carrier bag hanging off our arm because we cannot possibly carry anything without a bag, or the unexplained umbrella and heavy raincoat in the middle of August, the way we ask 'Tea?' as soon as someone is through the door, placing their umbrella, coat and carrier bag on the floor? No, I don't think it is, I think it's the way that no matter how messed up a certain accessory seems when we can see how practical it could be then we know we have met one of our own.

Forward thinking is an admirable quality surely? would you rather get wet or carry a brolly? and would you rather have your brolly in one hand and whatever it was you needed to buy from the shops in your hands or in a carrier bag? As for the coat, when it rans, it often gets colder, so that would be needed too, and if it does get warm then you have your carrier bag to put it in.

Texting or calling someone when we are waiting is not purely a sign that you wish no-one to talk to you but a good use of those few minutes in which the stranger could've tried to engage you in a pointless conversation.

Using swear words instead of adjectives isn't just laziness, it is to save ourselves from embarrassment if we use the wrong word, us Brits must not be seen to do anything out of the ordinary or cause a scene, and using the wrong word would be a big no-no, so instead we say fuck/fucked/fucker or fucking.

So now, in fear of using the wrong fucking words, and to fulfil my need to prepare for my venture into the outside world at some point today, I shall end this first entry to my blog, and off I'll trot with a notepad to jot down everything that I want to talk to myself about today, and save it for you, the unknown, and possibly non-existent readers.